Annihilation

Annihilation. Jeff Vandermeer. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. February 2014. 195 pages.  Source:  Audio book.

First Sentence: The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.

Plot: Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything. 

My thoughts: This story is told from the perspective of the biologist whose husband was part of the eleventh expedition.  A lot of the story is her personal history as she ends up being the lone survivor of this expedition.  It doesn't end with her returning to her home.  Leaving it wide open for the next book in the series...Acceptance.  

I'm not a fan of science fiction, which is what is actually shelved as on Goodreads, but I think I would continue on with the series if nothing else but to find out what is actually in the "tower".